smile
by willowsettlement
Summary: "With you around, Kiyoko-san smiles a lot more!"


**Augh, I wrote this in under an hour and only gave it a quick read-through, so I have no promise for quality. But, when I saw how little fanfiction these cuties had, I _had_ to write something for them.**  
**Lame title, I know, but I'm leaving for something in eight minutes so I had to come up with it quick.**

...

Tanaka and Nishinoya stop her after practice one day, and bow deep down. "Thank you for joining as manager!"

She spends a good thirty seconds struggling for words before choking out, "B-but I haven't done anything!"

"You helped us get funds, right?" Nishinoya says, and then he and Tanaka share a glance. "But more importantly…"

They both yell at the same time. "With you around, Kiyoko-san smiles a lot more!"

She's to flustered to think about their words at the time, but later, when she's home, they echo through her brain on repeat.

Even before joining the volleyball club, she'd heard about Kiyoko Shimizu. The boys in her class talked about the third year beauty, and the ones who had joined sports clubs without female managers complained about the volleyball teams 'luck'.

When she was approached by the older girl, Yachi had realized that the boys in her class were right – Kiyoko-san was beyond beautiful.

Yachi had found herself in awe, talking to and being around the practically-woman, and though she had at first thought it was merely in amazement of the beauty that Kiyoko-san possessed, she knew early on that it was also something…more.

She had a crush on Kiyoko.

Still, Yachi had pushed that to the back of her mind – Kiyoko was nice to her, of course, but there was no way the older girl could like here back. She was beautiful, two years older than Yachi, and had many admirers that were far better choices than a nervous first year girl who could barely stand up to her own mother without some else's help.

But the words of the second years…it would be wrong to say they gave her hope. Just because someone was friendly to you did not mean they were attracted to you, and Kiyoko was probably only smiling more to put the nervous Yachi more at ease among the intimidating giants that came with volleyball. But the boy's words did give her a warm, bubbly feeling in her stomach, one that caused her to smile just when she thought about them.

…

"Hinata-kun…" Yachi says, the next day, when the two of them are far enough away from the others that they can't be heard. "Nishinoya and Tanaka senpai told me that Kiyoko-san has, um, she's smiled more ever since I joined the club." Yachi doesn't want to ask 'is that true?' because she's afraid Hinata will say something like, 'oh, those two were just joking' or maybe even worse, 'I never noticed', but at the same time she hopes that Hinata notices the question in her words.

"Huh?" he says, and she feels her heart drop. But then he gets a look of deep thought on his face. "I guess they're right. I never really thought about it, but I'd only seen Kiyoko-san smile once or twice before you joined, and now I see her smile practically every day."

Yachi feels her heart go _ba-thump_, and she can't stop the smile that spreads across her face.

"U-um, Hinata, one last thing." She says, and he looks up at her again. "You, um. You like Kageyama, right? Like, in the love kind of way?"

Hinata's face goes red, and Yachi swears she can see steam shoot out of his head. His arms start flailing. "No…no! Why would you get that idea, aha…" he looks around, before leaning in and whispering, face still flushed, "H-how did you know?"

"It's sort of obvious…" Hinata looks panicked at her words, and Yachi quickly back-tracks. "Not to him or anything! And m-maybe it's not obvious to anyone else!"

"Please don't tell him." Hinata says, cutting her off. "I mean, that stupid guy doesn't need anything else to inflate his ego." He finishes with a _humph_, but the blush stays on his cheeks.

Yachi wonders if she should tell him it's obvious Kageyama feels the same way.

"I wouldn't tell!" She yells, and then blushes when some of the people on the team look her way. She quiets her voice to a whisper and says, "I. I think I might like Kiyoko in that way too."

"Oh," Hinata nods. "That makes sense." And the captain calls him over, and Yachi is left standing there.

…

Yachi spends the next week agonizing over her crush. Before, she had been able to push it to the back of her mind, but ever since telling Hinata about it, she can't forget the words of the second years, and every smile Kiyoko sends her way releases a new wave of butterflies.

She supposes, in one way, she is both fortunate and unfortunate in the fact that Kiyoko is a third year. Fortunate, because if she confesses, and is turned down, she will only have to go through a short period of awkwardness before Kiyoko is gone. (And unfortunate, because if she confesses and her feelings are returned – something she only allows herself to hope in the dead of the night when she is too tired to combat the thoughts with bad ones – she will only have a short period of time before Kiyoko is gone.)

She spends a week agonizing over this – this should I or shouldn't I – before she decides that, even though being turned down would hurt, if there was even the smallest chance that Kiyoko would return her feelings she would take it.

And so, after the end of practice she walks up to the older girl. "K – um. Kiyoko-san, could I please speak with you?"

Kiyoko, who had just finished talking to the captain, gave her a smile (and the butterflies of happiness joined the ones of nervousness in churning Yachi's stomach). "Yes?"

"Maybe…maybe someplace alone?" She says, because if she is going to be turned down she doesn't want it to be in front of the people she will have to deal with for the rest of her high school career.

Kiyoko tilts her head, but nods, and leads Yachi outside and towards a clear space in the school grounds. "What would you like to talk about?"

Yachi curls her hands into fists and looks at the ground before speaking. "I know you probably get dozens of confessions a week, and I know I'm a girl, and I know there's no way you could return my feelings for so many reasons, but I – I wanted to tell you that I like you! In –" she remembers what she said to Hinata a week ago (_in the love sort of way_) and even though it's embarrassing she doesn't have a better way to word it and so she says it that way, spitting out and tripping over the words. "In. In the – the love sort of way!"

Kiyoko stands there for a moment, silent, and Yachi's stomach drops. She's about to start to take it back, to apologize, when Kiyoko smiles. "I was going to go get some food before heading home. Do you want to join me?"

Yachi gapes. "Y-you mean, like a date?"

She's surprised to see a blush spread over the usually collected older girls face. "Yes. Like a date."

…

The next day, at practice, Yachi hears Tanaka whisper to Nishinoya, "Is it possible that Kiyoko's smiling even more?"

And when, after they've finished up, Kiyoko slips her hands into Yachi's and leads her out of the gym, she sees Hinata shoot her a small thumbs up, and sees Tanaka and Nishinoya's jaws practically fall to the floor in surprise, she laughs a happy giddy nervous laugh.

Kiyoko smiles down at her.


End file.
